Obesity is rapidly emerging as one of the greatest health risks in our current times, and which adversely affects the physical health of the obese person in many different ways that ultimately results in shortened lifespan. In addition, there are adverse psychological effects that obese people may endure that degrade the quality of their lives. Further, increased medical costs associated with obesity is a burden that society as a whole must shoulder.
At the extreme, there exists a class of morbidly obese individuals for which no non-invasive treatment appears to be workable. These individuals are usually morbidly obese due to a physical reason, such as an imbalance of hormones or other congenital or developed defect. In other instances, there are compulsive psychoses that cause a person to constantly eat, while in other cases the reasons why a person is morbidly obese may be simply unknown. In yet other instances, individuals who are not morbidly obese but are simply obese or perceive themselves as obese may feel social pressures that cause them to seek to obtain a body morphology considered “normal” or “desirable”. As a result, various surgical procedures that have been developed specifically for the morbidly obese are increasingly migrating into the arena of cosmetic surgery. However, these procedures may be dangerous, and one preferred treatment, gastric reduction, has a nationwide death rate ranging from about 0.5% to about 10% or so.
In these gastric reductions, capacity of the stomach is greatly reduced, typically from a capacity of about 800 cc to 1100 cc or so down to from about 15 ml to about 200 ml or so. There are a number of procedures by which the stomach is reduced, some of which involve forming a small pouch that receives food from the esophagus and which communicates with the larger portion of the stomach via a relatively narrow passage. In other procedures most of the stomach is bypassed surgically, with reconstructive surgery forming a smaller stomach pouch between the esaphagus and intestine. In yet other procedures, a constrictive band is placed around the stomach to form a small pouch above a larger region of the stomach, and stitched or stapled in place. In any case, these are invasive surgical procedures, some of which require cutting or perforating the stomach and the interfaces between the stomach and adjacent small bowel passageways. This results in the possibility of leakage of the stomach contents into the abdominal cavity, a disastrous outcome that may result in the death of the patient.
In accordance with the foregoing, Applicants have provided a surgical apparatus and method for use wherein once the apparatus inserted into the stomach, a balloon is inflated and used as a template around which a correctly-sized gastric pouch is formed. After completion of the gastric pouch, the pouch is pressurized by Applicant's apparatus to a selected pressure to test the integrity of the stitches and staples and to test the newly formed pouch for leakage. If a leak is detected it may be repaired immediately. One advantage of this apparatus and method is that leak and integrity testing may be done in the operating theatre instead of having to subject the patient to another complete surgical prep and procedure in the event of failure of stitching, stapling or in the event of leakage necessary of repair. Another significant advantage is that infections due to leakage of gastric contents into the abdominal cavity are precluded. Other advantages of Applicant's invention will become apparent upon a reading of the following specification.